Experts Database

Dr. Xóchitl C. Chávez is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside Department of Music, holding the distinction of being the first tenured Chicana in the UCR department and any UC system music program. She has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology with a designated emphasis in Latin American and Latino Studies from UC Santa Cruz, complemented by interdisciplinary training in Museum Studies, Ethnomusicology, Folklore, and Social Documentation.
As an Activist Scholar and musician, Dr. Chávez's research centers on the practices of accompaniment and sincere collaborative intention. She ethically participates in making music and dance while documenting the process of Mexican Indigenous migrants and Latinos in the United States, focusing on their cross-border efforts to maintain cultural traditions.
Dr. Chávez's forthcoming book, "La Guelaguetza: Oaxacan Migrant Festivals and the Making of Transborder Indigeneity" (University of Oxford Press, 2025), is the first transborder, multi-sited ethnography of its kind, based on over eight years of fieldwork and performance participation in Guelaguetza festivals in Oaxaca and California. Her research has garnered national recognition and support within the UC system, promoting international collaborative study.
Through her work, Dr. Chávez continues to bridge academic research with active participation in cultural practices, fostering a deeper understanding of transnational Indigenous experiences and expressions. Her research has been published in both Spanish and English in prestigious venues, including; Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal, Desacatos: Revista De Ciencias Sociales, Yearbook for Traditional Music, and through esteemed university presses such as the University of Indiana Press, University of California Press, and University of Illinois Press.
As a co-investigator with the University of Colorado Boulder's American Music Research Center, she has secured multiple grants, including funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for "Soundscapes of the People: A Musical Ethnography of Pueblo, Colorado." Dr. Chávez's work has been acknowledged by institutions, including the Mexican Consulate in California, the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage, the Colorado History Museum's El Pueblo History Museum, 2023 Colorado Association for Bilingual Education Board Award, and the UCR Office of International Affairs.
Most recently, Dr. Chávez has contributed her expertise as a curatorial advisor and guest curator for the Inaugural Molina Family Gallery in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino and is currently collaborating with The Cheech Museum, further demonstrating her commitment to sharing and preserving cultural heritage.

I am a doctoral researcher in Politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. Broadly, I am interested in the politics of migration in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). More specifically, I am interested in understanding how national governments across LAC manage different forms of migration (immigration, in-transit migration, forced migration, and return migration), what factors shape their management strategies, what explains variation across national governments in the region, and how such management strategies shape the lives of migrant communities. I address such questions by employing qualitative methods.

Ahlam Chemlali’s research examines the politics and practices of border violence and death as a key phenomenon in need of scrutiny in contemporary European migration politics. Chemlali explores how the externalization of European border control to North Africa produces the everyday violence of the border and how this shapes gendered experiences. Her research project offers a unique ethnographic perspective on how West African migrant women in transit navigate and negotiate the violent terrains that characterize the North African borderlands, with particular attention to Libya and Tunisia.

Ahlam has over 10 years of NGO experience and conducted over 70 field and fact-finding missions including designing and leading translational research studies with a special focus on human rights documentation, violence prevention, and development interventions in migrant and refugee populations across MENA-region and Sub-Saharan Africa.

I am a PhD researcher at the Laboratory of Anthropology of Contemporary Worlds (LAMC), Institute of Sociology, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium. I am researching ethnoracial power dynamixs in postcolonial DR Coongo through the case of Sino-Congolese intimate relationships. My previous work focused on Chinese gay student migration in France.

Lin Chen is a PhD candidate in Social Sciences at KU Leuven, Department of Political Science, at the research group of Leuven International and European Studies, and jointly in Sociology at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, at the research group of Interface Demography. She holds previous degrees as Master of Arts in Sociology at Columbia University, Masters of Arts in Economics in Boston University, and Master of Arts at Scoical Sciences in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Her doctoral research topic is research project focuses on the South-to-South student mobility from Africa to China, which aims to investigate “How Do Migration Networks Facilitate African Student Mobility and Integration In China? - A Social Network Perspective on South-to-South Migration”.

I am a sociologist and political scientist with the research interest in social and, speicfically, academic inequalities, European integration and emigration studies. In addition to my scientific work I am supporting Scholars at Risk at the Europa-University Flensburg and volunteer.